DC Sniper Case Comes to New York

Apprentice in Death by JD Robb

Well this is probably going to go down as one of my least favorite “In Death” books.

I think the main reason is because after reading a lot of Jeffery Deaver and Michael Connelly the past two months, reading a JD Robb mystery/crime/romance novels is just not going to ring my bell. Usually I’m all for watching Eve, Rourke and their friends tracking down the bad guys. however, this book tells you who the perpetrators are at about the 24% point and then a major part of the book is just trying to catch the bad guys. I just lost all interest. And we all know that none of the main characters are ever going to bite the bullet so I wasn’t running around freaked out that somebody close to Eve was going to die like Eve did towards the tail end of this book.

I was honestly bored by Eve in this book. There was once again a nonsense fight per usual between her and Roarke in involving Summerset that was just really dumb. I felt like yelling at all parties concerned that maybe their petty little crap can wait till later considering the fact that they were standing around after at least 20 people had been killed. Also Eve hating the new bone doctor needs to stop, I’m over it, she’s acting proprietary over someone that she has no business acting that way towards.

And Roarke irked the crap out of me. There were two separate scenes where Eve was injured in a minor way and he didn’t give a s*** and wanted everybody to drop everything and attend to her and it was just…Lord I wanted to slap him that’s all I got.

I am going to say that Eve, Roarke, Peabody, McNabb, Dr. Mira, Baxter, Trueheart, and others were just the same characters that they’ve been playing throughout these many in death books. So there’s really no surprises there. I honestly just felt kind of bored by the sameness. I really do need to just see something different soon before I just lose all interest in this series. I don’t want to see a death happened just to have a death happened. But maybe Peabody goes off and works elsewhere. Maybe Peabody and McNabb get married and have a baby. Maybe Mavis moves away.

Something has to give soon because unlike with other mystery crime novels, these books are getting super stale like The Women’s Murder Club and Stephanie Plum series. Deaver and Connelly keep me engaged even when I’m yelling at the main characters. Also Deaver and Connelly are not afraid to let their main characters mess up and just be wrong. It’s boring having Eve always be right and or having a psychic dream or something that leads her to an answer.

I think the writing wasn’t as great in this one just because the book didn’t know what it was trying to do I think. We have Eve investigating these two snipers throughout this book, but then there are scenes with Rourke telling Eve about how a bed he wants in their bedroom has a mysterious take behind it and tells Eve about it. Rourke also stops the show to show Eve potential designs of her new office. I literally could not give two craps what Eve’s office and/or her bedroom looks like. And it also felt a little heartless that they were thinking about that with the whole city afraid because there was mass shootings happening. And all it did was remind me of how annoyed that the last book even had this whole Eve office redesign be a fight between Eve and Roarke.

Also speaking of the writing, JD Robb needs to figure out what is going on with the continuity in this series. At this point it’s maybe been a year and there’s been about 20 plus books in that timeframe. That means that there must have been a murder that Eve was investigating about every other week in the past year which makes absolutely no sense. At this point everybody should be fleeing from New York because you’re going to die since that seems to be were all the serial killers go. And maybe that would not have bothered me so much except the last three books based on the timeline have maybe happened just a couple days apart. At this point Eve should be burned out, exhausted, tired, and/or somebody else should be driving her caseload. I’m still unsure how she always keeps catching all these high-profile cases and none of them seem to get shuttled off to other lieutenants in the department.

I think the flow was not thay great in this one due to them going back and forth between scenes of mass shootings, to Eve investigating, then Eve consulting with Dr. Mira (who really didn’t add anything at all to this book) to romantic scenes with Rourke, to Eve and Roarke talking about the redesign of their bedroom and other rooms, then to Bella’s first birthday party, and then back into interviewing the suspects it just felt bizarre.

I thought that the ending was kind of blah and even though I already have a hold on “Echoes in Death” I’m kind of not looking forward to it. Here’s hoping that one is much better than “Apprentice in Death.”

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Comments

Amen to all of this. I gave up on this series several books ago because of that ‘sameness.’ I mean yes, it’s always nice to see Mavis and Dr. Mira and everybody, but they no longer add anything to the plot; they just show up to say hello. If you like the next one better, I may give it a try again!

Yeah, I loved the first batch of the In Death books and they have been really samey for me since Thankless in Death. I just got “Echoes in Death” but a Goodreads friend told me the book goes into how different Eve’s office and the bedroom look since redecorating. I kid you not.

Yessss, all of this. I almost can’t believe how long I’ve been sucking it up with the sameness, I feel like I wouldn’t put up with it from any other series. I don’t see any reason the recurring characters can’t get slightly more active subplots. The series desperately needs something fresh. Also, Roarke drives me nuts more often than not tbh.

I think that’s the rub. I have dropped other series except for the Kinsey Milhone series. That’s because even though X was a fall in quality IMHO, the series has been getting better and better with age. At book #43 and #44 the whole series feels stale. Roarke has been irking me for a while. I don’t know when I started to get annoyed by him, but it’s like every book now I usually want to shake him. He was better in the next one though.

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